Sunday, November 18, 2001: I sat in
my
backyard from 2:30 to 5AM this morning and was treated to the most
spectacular display of meteors I've ever seen. These Leonids were even
better than the Perseids I saw in Death
Valley.

The temperature was in the 40's and it
was clear, but the skies over lower Westchester County, NY are not very
dark. I took the easy if not ideal viewing option and just set up a lawn
chair in my backyard.

The meteors were numerous and brilliant. Smaller meteors appeared
several times a minute on average. Very bright meteors appeared once
every minute or two. Then there were the huge fireballs that left a
persistent glowing trail in the sky for 5-10 seconds afterwards. One was
so intense that as I was facing east, my yard lit up and I thought for a
moment that my neighbor had turned on his backyard flood light. I turned
around in time to see a large bright white fireball appearing to move
more slowly than most, leaving a long flaming trail. This was the meteor
of the night. Unfortunately, my camera was pointed east. I also saw
several "doubles", twin meteors streaking in parallel.

All picture were taken with a tripod mounted Nikon
FM using a Nikor 24mm f2.0 lens. Film was Kodak Ektachrome 200. Exposure
was f2.0 in all cases. Unfortunately,
I had a big problem with dew, and my camera lens kept fogging.

Click
on the pictures to see larger images.

You can clearly see
the Big Dipper in this picture. The meteor is to the left of the
handle. The exposure was less than 5 seconds. On the slide, the
sky is very dark and the meteor is a deep red color. The dark area at bottom left is the chimney
and part of the roof of my house.

This meteor is much
higher up in the sky. It appears to come out of the trees just
above the top pair of stars making up the dipper of the Big
Dipper. The exposure was about 10-15 seconds, so the sky is much
lighter than in the first picture. As a result, this slide scanned
very well.

This was a longer
exposure as can be discerned by the star trails. Perhaps 5
minutes? In the full size image, the sky
is so light it almost looks like day. Yes, I should have gone
someplace with darker skies and a better view of the horizon. You
can see the meteor in the upper left corner of the picture near
the thin tree branches projecting down from the top of the
picture.

The pictures are as disappointing as the meteors
themselves were spectacular. From over 30 slides, only 3 had a discernable image
of a Leonid meteor.

Around 4AM I heard the sound of jets. Two
small points of light, one in trail of the other, streaked overhead,
moving Northeast very high, very fast, very loud. Obviously military,
the sound of freedom.